· Public charity
San Diego County Bar Foundation
Grants to non-profits that provide access to justice to underserved in San Diego County.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 26 grants below total $476,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $486,680 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $10,680 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $60k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $236k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $180k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Center for Employment Opp | $80,000 |
| Natl Conflict Resolution Ctr | $50,000 |
| Think Dignity | $50,000 |
| Father Joes Village | $45,000 |
| Uprise Theatre | $25,000 |
| CA Western School of Law | $15,000 |
| License to Freedom | $15,000 |
| Survivors of Torture Intl | $15,000 |
| Radys Childrens Hospital | $15,000 |
| Casa Cornelia Law Ctr | $12,500 |
| Alliance for African Assist | $12,500 |
| SD Volunteer Lawyer Program | $12,500 |
| La Maestra Comm Health | $12,500 |
| CA Rural Legal Assistance | $12,500 |
| Pathways to Citizenship | $12,500 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY19–24, $154k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +37% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $65k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- TDThink Dignity8× · 2017–2024 · $408k · revenue +77%
- CWCALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW8× · 2017–2024 · $289k · revenue +10%
ST VINCENT DE PAUL VILLAGE INC5× · 2017–2021 · $195k · revenue +124%
Funded once
- ADAPPELLATE DEFENDERS INCone grant, 2018 · $20k · revenue +14%
- CRCALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue +116%
- CRCA RURAL LEGAL ASS INCone grant, 2022 · $15k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Southern California Immigration Project is a public interest nonprofit organization dedicated to providing pro bono legal services to survivors of human and civil rights violations.
In 2024, Inner City Law Center, ICLC, served over 3,400 people, helping vulnerable Angelenos to remain in their homes and recover nearly $20.5 million in financial benefits.
To provide equal access to justice and due process to indigent immigrants facing removal proceedings.
To provide transformative legal services that enable diverse communities in East Palo Alto and beyond to achieve a secure and thriving future.
Legal Link removes legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem.
Inland Counties Legal Services (ICLS) mission is to pursue justice and equality for low-income individuals through counsel, advice, advocacy, and community education, treating all with dignity and respect. Over the last six decades, ICLS…
As one of the most enduring civil rights institutions on the West Coast, we work to dismantle systems of oppression and racism, and build an equitable and just society.
Our mission is to reflect Gods intent for humanity, to live as a reconciled and and restored community. We stand in solidarity with immigrants by providing high quality, affordable immigration legal services and advocating for just…
CFJ promotes access to justice for underserved communities seeking to assert their legal rights. Our pro bono-based projects bridge the gap for underserved communities seeking safety, stability, and justice. CFJ engages volunteer attorneys…
To provide civil legal services to low-income individuals and to promote equal access to the justice system through advocacy, legal counseling, innovative self-help services, in depth legal representation, community education, and economic…
La Raza Centro Legal San Francisco provides high quality, highly trusted, free legal services to low-income or immigrant clients in the San Francisco Bay Area.
VIDA mainly represents immigrant survivors of violent crimes particularly domestic violence sexual assault abuse and trafficking in persons modern-day slavery forced labor.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program Inc and the most unlike its peers is Uprise Theatre. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 32 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 14% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
26 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 26 of the 54 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds Think Dignity ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW ↗
- Who funds ST VINCENT DE PAUL VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds Uprise Theatre ↗
- Who funds Casa Cornelia Legal Services ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE BAIL PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ELDER LAW & ADVOCACY ↗
- Who funds VOICES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds LICENSE TO FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds FREE TO THRIVE ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS ↗
- Who funds SURVIVORS OF TORTURE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO VOLUNTEER LAWYER PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Interfaith Community Services Inc ↗
- Who funds PATHWAYS TO CITIZENSHIP ↗
- Who funds APPELLATE DEFENDERS INC ↗
- Who funds PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE INC ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The San Diego Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Sempra Foundation · The California Wellness Foundation · The San Diego Women's Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · The California Endowment · California Changelawyers · Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties · Alliance Healthcare Foundation · The Parker Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization San Diego County Bar Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.